Wolfville

From the opening

These tales by the Old Cattleman have been submitted to perhaps a dozen people. They have read, criticised, and advised. The advice was good; the criticism just. Some suggested a sketch which might in detail set forth Toffville; there were those who wanted something like a picture of the Old Cattleman; while others urged an elaboration of the personal characteristics of Old Man Enright, Doc Peets, Cherokee Hall, Moore, Tutt, Boggs, Faro Nell, Old Monte, and Texas Thompson. I have, how-ever, concluded to leave all these matters to the illustrations of Mr. Remington and the imaginations of those who read. I think it the better way-certainly it is the easier one for me. I shall therefore permit the Old Cattleman to tell his stories in his own fashion. The style will be crude, abrupt, and meagre, but I trust it will prove as satisfactory to the reader as it has to me.

"These yere obsequies which I'm about mentionin'," observed the Old Cattleman, "is the first real funeral Wolfville has."

The old fellow had lighted a cob pipe and tilted his chair back in a fashion which proclaimed a plan to be comfortable. He had begun to tolerate--even encourage--my society, although it was clear that as a tenderfoot he regarded me with a species of gentle disdain.

I had provoked the subject of funeral ceremonies by a recurrence to the affair of the Yellowhouse Man, and a query as to what would have been the programme of the public-spirited hamlet of Wolfville if that invalid had died instead of yielding to the nursing of Jack Moore and that tariff on draw-poker which the genius of Old Man Enright decreed.

It came in easy illustration, as answer to my question, for the Old Cattleman to recall the funeral of a former leading spirit of Southwestern society. The name of this worthy was Jack King; and with a brief exposition of his more salient traits, my grizzled raconteur led down to his burial with the remark before quoted.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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